Re: [tlug] Need purchasing advice for a linux compatible desktop

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

Godwin

I appreciate that you aren't trying deliberately to be belittling of 
others problems. But you do seem to be, from my perspective, mistaken in 
your assertion that the Wacom problem took 4 days to solve.

To illustrate my side of this, look more closely at the advise given. 
The person who directed me to the bug report web page, suggested that it 
implied a bug that I would probably have to wait for a fix for.

Had I listened to that particular advice, I might not have got my Wacom 
to work. It was out of mere curiosity that I followed some instructions 
on the web page that turned out to work.

So the last step of the journey was no more insightful or particularly 
more informed than the helpful and informed advice that I got elsewhere. 
It was just another essentially random step in a series of random steps 
that took about 6 months to walk through.

And, you also completely wash over the "once asked for relevant 
information". You'll not that nobody asked for something too specific. 
They just suggested that I should try and explain the problem. So what I 
was able to provide as an explanation was a bunch of information that I 
got from the previous months of exploration. We'll never know, but it's 
doubtful in my mind that had we started from scratch here that a 
solution would have emerged so quickly.

None of this is to diminish the helpfulness of the TLUG members, who are 
very helpful. What I'm saying is that the other lists, such as the 
Ubuntu list and the Wacom Sourceforge list, can't be discredited just 
because they provided the information that led to a solution, but the 
final moment of the solution happened here.

And mainly, what I'm saying, is that the problem took six months, not 4 
days.
> We're supposed to be
> *advocating* FLOSS here, not discouraging new converts by telling them that
> it's going to take them 6 months to solve hardware problems.
>   
I'm not sure how or why I'm supposed to be advocating Linux or anything 
else. I'm an end user who has no intention of saying anything other than 
the truth of my experiences.

And it is true that for some pieces of hardware, or for some 
applications, it will not "just work" out of the box, and may take weeks 
or months to solve, even if it looks as though there is or should be 
support for it. That time may be spent in a linear progression towards 
the problem, or a random search among competing suggestions, or any 
other form of progression. And a new user should be aware of that.

If you can promise that every problem won't take weeks, or months, or 
that 4 days is what someone should expect, then please, make my printer, 
my Palm Pilot and my Hauppauge video card all work now. The last of that 
list I haven't asked about here yet, but the first two have been waiting 
for a solution right here on this list for a couple of weeks now.

--
Dave M G